Avard Fairbanks

Avard Tennyson Fairbanks (March 2, 1897 – January 1, 1987) was a 20th-century American sculptor. Over his eighty-year career, he sculpted over 100 public monuments and hundreds of artworks. Fairbanks is known for his religious-themed commissions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) including the Three Witnesses, Tragedy of Winter Quarters, and several Angel Moroni sculptures on spires of the church's temples. Additionally, Fairbanks sculpted over a dozen Abraham Lincoln-themed sculptures and busts among which the most well-known reside in the U.S. Supreme Court Building and Ford's Theatre Museum.

From a young age, Fairbanks was a talented artist. At 13 years old, he attended the Art Students League of New York on scholarship and his work was displayed at the National Academy of Design a year later. In 1913, he studied abroad in Paris at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts where he was the youngest student admitted to the French salons. He taught sculpture at several universities and attended medical school at the University of Michigan where he earned a doctorate in anatomical studies in order to better represent the human body in his art.